inkbluesky

tabbed and numbered

(so much for reliable hosting – some photos posted in the last few days may not go to larger size when clicked. I’m working on a solution)

When is it OK to start saying that we live in a police state without sounding like a shrill alarmist, Report: NYPD Watched RNC-Bound Activists

The secret digests said some of the groups planned acts such as blocking intersections and hacking into Web sites. But the Times reported that the vast majority of the reports it viewed described people who gave no obvious sign of wrongdoing, such as members of the satirical performance-art group “Billionaires for Bush” and a group that had planned concerts peppered with political speeches.

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the revelations of “spying” were shocking.

If the police have a solid lead that a person or group of people is going to commit a crime then it is reasonable under law to keep an eye on those people. In this case most of the people that were spied on seemed to have meet one simple criteria: they didn’t like George W. Bush’s policies. Disagreeing with politicians is as American as jazz and apple pie, if it becomes a crime to disagree then lots of us from all political persuasions are in trouble. I wonder if they spied on the Republican rioters in Miami in 2000.

As an issue it is pretty dry, but it does behove us to keep up with the net neutrality issue. Do you want the same people that think its alright to broadcast 14 minutes of commercials for every half hour sit-com and that DRM is just great deciding what traffic gets priority on the net, FCC Takes Another Stab at Net Neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission is launching an inquiry to determine how broadband providers are behaving in terms of providing access to the Internet to subscribers.

The Notice of Inquiry, announced at the March 22 commission meeting here, is intended to seek comments on whether providers are restricting access to sites on the Internet, whether they are giving any sites favorable treatment and whether the companies charge extra for that, and how consumers are affected. The inquiry is also designed to determine whether the FCC needs to issue a new principle of nondiscrimination.